Death of Kings Read online

  “I am always smiling with my Nell.”

  “Not tonight. You have looked grim and distracted ever since you arrived.”

  “The light is bad in here.”

  We had a feeble candle to light us to bed. Nell was prudent in her housekeeping. No doubt too her customers preferred themselves in that dim way, although Nell showed to advantage in any light. (Such thoughts, to do with her and her customers, entered my mind unbidden.)

  “You fool, Nick, do you think I need to see you to tell how you are? I can hear it in your voice. I can feel it in you while you lie beside me. You are all stiff and uneasy.” I am?

  “Except in the one part.”

  “I am tired. Two plays, a deal of walking about and . . . and . . .”

  “And?”

  “Other matters, which I cannot talk about.”

  “Very well.”

  I expected her to press me further. Women are bound to be curious, aren’t they? I was ready to hint – in the most general terms – at large concerns, important business, sundry weighty reasons, etc. This might have afforded me some slight relief from the burden of secrecy. And I didn’t altogether dislike the way Nell treated me with a new respect now that the Chamberlain’s were to play before the Queen. Accordingly, I sensed I might win an even more reverential favour from her if I touched on, only touched on, the great affairs of state in which I was becoming entangled. This may seem to contradict the silence which had, in effect, been enjoined on me by Master Secretary Cecil but I reasoned that hinting was not telling.

  “You don’t want to know?” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter whether I want to know or not. The only thing that you want me to know is that you don’t want to tell.”

  Perhaps it was because of the tiredness which I’d just mentioned to her, and which I hadn’t much exaggerated, but I really found it a bit difficult to follow what she was saying here. I took refuge in repetition.

  “I cannot speak of it.”

  “Very well,” she said again.

  I waited.

  “So this is behind your absences from my bed?” she said. “This thing you cannot speak of.”

  I saw then the sudden use to which I might put the state business on which I was engaged. It could serve my turn too. For it was true that I had not been so frequent an occupant of her bed of late. There was – there had recently been – another matter about which I was not willing to hint at all to Nell, and I realised that I could hide it behind the larger, shadowy business.

  “Yes,” I said. “Forgive me, Nell. I do not willingly absent myself.”

  This was both true and not-true.

  “I believe you do not, Nicholas.”

  I wasn’t sure from the tone of her voice whether she did believe my words. As she had said, my friend was well able to ‘read’ me through my voice and attitude, even though she could neither read nor write. But I, book-learned as I was, was still so unschooled in her that I could not clearly construe her expression by the candle’s feeble glimmer.

  “But men will do as they please,” she said. “Even as women will do everything to please them.”

  “It pleases me to be here with you, now,” I said, stroking her warm flank.

  “Here and now is easily said.”

  “Easily said may be heartfelt too,” I said, putting well over half a heart into my words.

  “Here and now,” she echoed. “What about there and then?”

  “I do not understand you,” I said.

  “I think you do,” Nell said. “But it doesn’t matter. Let us sleep now since you are so tired out at the hands of these things which can’t be spoken of.”

  After that I soon fell asleep. That sleep, and the few minutes’ talk which led up to it, were the last vestiges of ordinary life which I was to enjoy for some time.

  After the rigours of that day with its two plays, the next one was, for me, one of comparative ease. Or should have been. Yet it turned into one of the most difficult, and alarming, of my life.

  Although I had no diversion apart from yet another rehearsal of Twelfth Night in the evening, habit and the love of work drew me to the Globe in the morning. There might be something for me to do. I might be useful.

  I should have stayed in bed.

  Sure enough, the Book-keeper of the Globe spoke to me. He was a sallow-faced gentleman named Allison who played a variety of roles in our Company. While a new play was preparing, it was his task to ensure fair copies were made from the author’s foul papers, since no-one can use a splotty, scrawled and scratched-out manuscript, all warm and illegible from its creator’s hand. Therefore the foul papers must be sent to the scriveners to be copied out neat and fair several times over, one of these copies being required by the Master of the Revels for allowance. Then Master Allison writes out a Plot on a piece of paper which hangs near one of the entrances to the stage, telling all when they are required to appear and with what gear (a drawn sword, a severed head, a fluttering handkerchief). And during performance Allison is our prompter. Dick Burbage and one or two others excepted, I don’t suppose that anyone knew the plays we put on as well as did Master Allison, that is, knew them from paper scrawlings to their fleshly incarnation in performance.

  But perhaps his chief role was to be the Company’s memory and treasurer. I had heard Master Geoffrey Allison liken a play to a poor, lone boat on the high seas of this world, a little bobbing bark freighted with the author’s hopes, prey to passing adventurers and pirates who might wish to possess another’s work by force and pass it off as their own or, more likely, to offer it up dismasted and mutilated as sacrifice to an ignorant public. Until a play is entered at the Stationer’s Hall for printing, the author’s words are like the blossom that floats through the spring air: the product of Mother Nature and any man’s for the sweeping up. This rather charming analogy between words and blossom was another of Master Allison’s tropes. He had a taste for elaborate images. It was probably caused by hanging around poetry for too long.

  Anyway, he said, it behoves a self-respecting Company of players not only to keep their own hands out of other Companies’ pockets and plackets but also to ensure that what is theirs (for once the author has been paid his £5 or £6 the play becomes as much the property of the Company as are the costumes) remains safely stowed.

  In the Book-keeper’s office there is a locked chest. In the chest is a treasure which is the equal of the golden fleece sought by Jason in the far reaches of Colchis. This is my comparison and not Master Allison’s. For the chest contains play manuscripts. I have glimpsed this treasure, or, to be more precise, the solid oak trunk which contains it, bound about with iron hoops and secured with two padlocks.

  It was about this great trunk and its contents that the Bookkeeper spoke to me.

  “Nicholas, you have some time at leisure this morning, I believe.”

  “Nobody would know that better than you, Geoffrey,” I said. “You are aware of all our comings and goings.”

  You see on what easy and familiar terms I was with the other toilers in the playhouse even if there were a few, such as the Burbages and WS, whom I addressed more formally.

  “Well, since you are free for now, perhaps you would do me a little favour.”

  “Willingly,” said I, full of helpfulness.

  “I am occupied elsewhere.”

  “You are a busy man,” said I, full of a junior’s approbation.

  “In fact, it should suit someone of your bookish habits and disposition. Master Shakespeare suggested that you would serve. Also I have heard that you possess a good hand and write neat.”

  “Then I am at your service,” said I, even more pleased at being described as bookish, though I am aware that this compliment would not do for every young man, as well as being preferred for a task by WS.

  “I have a chest in my office which contains fair copies of many of the pieces that we have put on.”

  “I know it.”

  “I need a master-regist
er of what is in the chest. Even I do not know everything that is there. There is a mass of material in the bottom of the chest which might as well be at the bottom of the sea. Can you swim?”

  “I do not like the water,” I said, humouring him and his figures of speech.

  “Oh well. All that I require for now is the names of plays, names of playwrights, no more.”

  “A catalogue you mean.”

  I was, for some reason, surprised by the request. I don’t know what I’d been expecting but it wasn’t this.

  “I need someone that I can trust. Perhaps I should say we need someone we can trust,” pursued Master Allison. “Ever since our move across the river I have been intending to catalogue what the chest contains but, like many small tasks, it continually slips just beyond one’s fingers. Then Master Shakespeare, finding that this had not been done, he says to me yesterday, ‘Why not ask the new man, Nicholas Revill? He looks sharp and has a fair hand, and he is a lover of plays.’”

  “Master Shakespeare said all that about me?”

  “Indeed he did.”

  “How does he know I write neat and clear?”

  “Oh I don’t know, Nicholas, and I don’t propose to enquire. You know how ready he is with a compliment. You must ask him yourself. The question is, will you make this master-list of the treasure in our chest?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then there is no better moment to begin than now. We should seize time by the forelock.”

  “Undoubtedly,” I said.

  “I do not think there’s more than a few hours’ work in it. I will bring you pen and paper. Here are the keys to the locks.”

  He handed them over rather unceremoniously but made it all right by adding, “Be sure that I will tell Burbage and Shakespeare how happy you were to undertake this little task for the Company.”

  A few minutes later found me on my hands and knees – a posture of obeisance not entirely inappropriate, in view of the contents – before the great chest in Master Allison’s office. Beside me were ink, pen, paper. The lid of the trunk was propped open. Inside were bundles of paper, secured with ribbon or string or cord. A certain disorder prevailed. I wondered whether the trunk had been examined since the move across the river little more than a year before, when the Chamberlain’s Company secretly decamped from their site in Finsbury and established themselves here on Bankside.

  I settled myself, cross-legged, on the floor. I took out a bundle of paper, undid the cord and spread out the half dozen vellum-covered scripts which it secured. I picked one up, brought it near to my eyes and flicked through the pages. I wondered whether Master Allison would begrudge me the extravagance of a candle. The play was called Uther Pendragon, a tale of King Arthur’s father. The next was titled Vespasian; and the next Vortigern; and I was beginning to think that there was some system to Master Allison’s bundling of scripts together – for these ones all dealt with the olden times in Britain or imperial Rome – when I picked up the fourth and found it was some light piece called A Woman Hard to Please. After that there was a play with which I was familiar, since it was one of the earliest I’d participated in at the Chamberlain’s, namely A City Pleasure.

  I examined another bundle drawn at random from the trunk and discovered a similar mix of the historical-pastoral-comical-tragical. Nor was there any unity as to authors. They were jumbled swoopstake, so that a Baxter sat next to a Rawle, a Jonson nestled with a Jackson, while Shakespeare himself bedded down with Boscombe. Indeed, some of the manuscripts were not even graced with the name of their author.

  A smell now rose up from the trunk which was anything but magical. It was an unappetising, stale odour, as of things kept too long in the dark and now calling feebly for attention. I started to wonder whether my belief that this chest was the equivalent of Jason’s fleece wasn’t rather fanciful. Instead, the contents suggested a ewe’s greasy fell, a memory I carried with me from my country days.

  Confronted with all this paper, my mood suddenly changed. I would like to have shown the chest and its contents to Master Richard Milford. Even unread – especially unread – they were eloquent enough, for they spoke of the vanity of authorship, but in a different sense to that which I had originally applied to him. Oh high thoughts, oh great expectations! Here were piles of paper bound together, here was great expenditure of ink, here were all the fruits of heart and mind. And to what purpose . . . ?

  But enough of melancholy! I had a job to do. I returned to my examination of the chest’s contents.

  I began to think that Master Allison was probably one of those men who have their own private manner of arranging things, a manner which is impenetrable to anyone else. I suspect that, if you’d requested a copy of The World Gone Mad or The Tragical History of Appius and Virginia, he would have plunged a hand into his trunk and within moments have retrieved the piece in question. Perhaps. Hadn’t he said that parts of this hoard were as unglimpsed as the sea-bed?

  As far as I was concerned, however, sifting and cataloguing this heap of gold, this pile of dust, seemed likely to occupy more than the promised few hours of work. I regretted the alacrity with which I’d agreed to do it. As I picked up pen and paper, I wondered how I might modestly indicate to Master Allison (to say nothing of Masters WS and Burbage) that, although this was a labour of love, it was still a labour.

  I plunged my hand into the bottom of the chest and dragged up to the surface some mouldering manuscripts. Some of them lacked title-pages while others were no more than titles and a list of characters. I began trying to put the pieces together, and achieved a match in three or four cases. These were fusty works, perhaps deserving their sea-bed obscurity. One, however, caught my eye. It consisted of a frontispiece and only a couple of pages of dialogue. Fragments of string showed where the bulk – or the hulk – of the drama had come loose from its moorings on the title-page. I was interested to note that the characters who figured in this prefatory scene were named Belladonna and Julia, and that the former was an heiress and the latter her personal servant. So much could easily be gleaned from the expository conversation of the two. I was more interested still to register the title of this drama: The Courtesan of Venice. I checked the cast-list. The other characters there sounded familiar too. No author was named.

  Well, there are no favourites like the old favourites. If at first you don’t succeed, then go in search of someone who has and steal their work. This was, for sure, the source of Master Milford’s Venetian Whore, the play to which I had given my faint stamp of approval and which I’d encouraged Richard to take direct to the Globe shareholders. No wonder the style of the piece had seemed a little dated to me; it was probably more than a decade old. And the hulk – or the bulk – of the drama hadn’t so much come loose from its moorings on the title-page as been wrenched from them.

  Strangely, I found myself blushing as furiously as Master Milford, as furiously as if I myself were the book-thief. It’s odd how you can feel guilty on behalf of another.

  Richard must have got hold of Allison’s keys, with or (more likely) without permission. I could visualise him scrabbling round the bottom of the chest, possibly grabbing at a handful of manuscripts in his haste to find something suitable, something he might pass off as his own. Naturally he was taking a risk. Even if the play was more than ten years old, there might have been someone in the Chamberlain’s who remembered it – if we had ever put on in the first place, of course. But when I thought of the hundreds of plays that must have moved into and then moved out of the Chamberlain’s ken during the latter years of the last century, then Master Milford’s daring began to seem quite calculated. It might even be that The Courtesan of Venice had strayed in from somewhere else, possibly another acting company, or that it harked back to the days when the Chamberlain’s were Lord Strange’s men. After all, a whore is any man’s for the asking, and the sixpence in his pocket.

  Now, nobody expects a playwright to be truly original. In fact, one who fashioned his own material
out of himself would rightly be regarded wth suspicion. After all there are not so many plots in the world. In any case, everyone knows it is the playwright’s duty to deck the familiar and make it seem new. But what Richard Milford had done was not so much adaptation as appropriation, if the opening pages were anything to go by. And I grew hotter still to think how he had tried to use me to forward his schemes with the shareholders. I tucked the Courtesan’s fragments, her openings, into my shirt.

  I returned to my cataloguing, but in an angry and fitful spirit, and as soon as it came to the dinner-hour I was able to justify quitting my task for a few minutes or more and break off for refreshment in the Goat & Monkey. In truth I was hoping to see my Nell there, for if she had nothing better to do she sometimes frequented the tavern in the middle of the day. At that moment I craved something familiar and wished to be taken back to her crib and diverted with a friendly tumble or, perhaps, nothing more strenuous than a friendly word. But she was either about her business elsewhere or not yet up and about in the winter world, so I had to content myself instead with a pot of ale and some words with the landlord on the subject of the weather.

  As I sat over my drink in the near-empty tavern I considered Richard Milford’s plagiary and decided that what grated with me wasn’t so much the theft of another’s words (there’s nothing new under the sun, etc.) but the way he had humbly asked for my opinion and then attempted to use me as a kind of Trojan Horse to smuggle the work into the Globe playhouse. My heart rose high in indignation in my breast and then sank low to see who had just walked through the door.

  “Hello, Nicholas,” said Richard Milford. “I may join you?”

  But he had already sat down and signalled the drawer for service. He offered to buy me a drink but I refused on the pretext that my tankard was still half full.

  “I forget that you drink slow,” he said. “But with me, when I look down it’s usually to see an empty glass. Sometimes I wonder who’s drunk it.”

  “Oh, the ghost of an author, I expect,” I said.

  He was in a good humour, and this put my back up.